[QUOTE=gnaget;24118766]This idea that someone will approach you and help you with directions is nonsense -- at least in Tokyo. Like 0.1% of the population can string together an English sentence (after 6 years of schooling) even if they have more passive knowledge than they will admit.
[QUOTE]

True, you do have to ask, but people are almost always willing to help. When Japanese people are lost, they approach a police box (kôban) or go into a shop and ask. As an English-speaker, you will have best luck with younger people, who tend to retain their high school English better than older people.

On one trip in about 2012, I was trying to find a client's office using the 2004 edition of the Tokyo City Atlas. (Alas, this excellent and portable book has not revised since then, but it may be useful for you, since none of the major tourist sites have been moved or destroyed since then. It not only shows the block and neighborhood numbers but also manages to label everything in both English and Japanese.). When I ducked into a coffee shop for help, the young women behind the counter conferred for a moment, and then one of them explained that, due to a number of bank mergers in the past couple of years, all the banks shown on the map had new names.

If the person you ask for help doesn't understand your spoken English, write down the name of your destination in block letters. Japanese high school English emphasizes reading rather than speaking, so nearly everyone can make sense of printed English.